LONDON, June 1 (RIA Novosti) - Millvina Dean, the last known surviving passenger of the legendary Titanic ocean liner, which sank nearly a century ago, has died at the aged of 98 in a care home in Hampshire, British media said on Monday.
Dean was only two months old when the ship, carrying 2,200 people, sank in 1912 after it struck an iceberg during its maiden voyage between the British port of Southampton and New York. At least 1,496 people were killed in the world's greatest maritime tragedy, and some 306 bodies were recovered.
Only 706 people were rescued. Dean, her mother and two-year-old brother left the sinking ship in one of the lifeboats, their father died.
Dean said that though she had no memories of the disaster, it had changed her life, because her family was due to move to the U.S., but returned back to Southampton after the tragedy.
"If it hadn't been for the ship going down, I'd be an American," she told the BBC in an interview before her death.
She said she had never watched James Cameron's film of the disaster and never visited the site of the tragedy fearing that it would upset her.
In recent years, the 97-year-old woman had tried to raise money to pay her nursing home fees by selling some of her Titanic memorabilia.
